


but when he walks in

by macaulaytwins



Category: Secret History - Donna Tartt
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Canon Compliant, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Incest, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Post-Bacchanal (Secret History), Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:02:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27499108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/macaulaytwins/pseuds/macaulaytwins
Summary: based off me only noticing that charles and camilla return to virginia together immediately after the events at hampden during my second re-read!camilla-centric musings on henry, charles, and her life in virginia post-canon.there is nothing explicit in this, but all the usual warnings for vaguely referenced canon-compliant incest and discussions of suicide. low key inspired by "me and my husband" by mitski.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	but when he walks in

**Author's Note:**

> hello.. follow me on twit @macaulaytwins

The oddest thing about it was how quickly everything returned to normal.

It had hardly been a week since she had been staring into a bathroom mirror lit by hospital fluorescents, wiping blood off of her face with a damp towel, eyes hollow and wild. Now, she was on the train: sitting in the same train car they usually did, side-by-side, as if he hadn’t brandished a gun at her just the week before.

She always took the window seat because she sometimes got nauseous, and she was grateful for it, now, because she could gaze out the window at the rolling hills and cloudless sky and think of Henry returning there. They would open the ground and place him inside of it, handfuls and handfuls of dirt on top. She wondered if he would consider it undignified. If he would have preferred something more Athenian: A burning pyre. Ashes in a decorated urn.

It had always been hard to guess what Henry thought about things, although she had gotten better at it towards the end. Even though she had seen it herself: the explosion inward, the crumbling of his knees, the emptiness of his eyes– it was still hard to believe that only a week ago, Henry Winter had lived, and today he was dead. Absent from this place, from anywhere.

Beside her, Charles was staring at the carpeted floor of the train, eyes downcast. He hadn’t had a drink before they’d left, and she knew he probably felt the heavy, stinging warmth of a hangover. He’d told her once, in an argument, that if he was sober for too long, it felt like his skin was too tight. She could tell he felt that way now, his right-hand itching at his arm, looking for means to escape. She wondered how she would explain herself to Nana. She was supposed to be the responsible one, to keep Charles out of trouble. It had been that way ever since he had been caught by the truancy officer in middle school, passed out with a bottle of cooking sherry in a park bathroom. They were both coming home, worse than they had left, and with nothing to show for it.

They lugged their heavy carpetbags up onto the porch, and it was suddenly easy to pretend things had not been as bad as they had been. Miraculously, Charles maintained his veneer of good-natured temperament, and he greeted Nana as he usually did with a smile and a kiss on the cheek. Nana gave her condolences. She knew that one of their classmates had died in a hiking accident and that another had killed himself shortly after. Nothing more or less than that.

Neither Henry nor Bunny had ever come to see their home in Virginia. It was strangely comforting to be somewhere wholly untouched by the events in Vermont. Nana lifted Camilla’s chin with her wrinkled hand, frowning. “Poor little girl,” she said.

That night, in her childhood bedroom, she stared up at the ceiling and thought about God. About the God that existed in the Sunday school that she and Charles had attended as children. About the God that she had seen running in the woods. About the God she had become: standing knee-deep in a lake, hair dripping with blood, Lingulodinium polyedrum blooming with light where her body met the water.

The rustle of the door against the rug startled her from her thoughts. It was Charles, pushing the door open quietly with a creek and crawling into bed beside her without a word. He was warm, and he wrapped his hot hands around her, pulling her flush against him, their cheeks touching. He smelled like whiskey and salt. His cheeks were wet.

“I’m sorry, Milly,” he cried, holding her, “I’m sorry.”

She said nothing, but she didn’t pull away. She tucked her head into the crook of his shoulder. There was a photo of them like that, as infants, curled against each other like Barnhouse cats, eyes glued shut.

The weeks went by stagnantly in the Virginia heat, and things were easy to return to the way they were before Hampden. It was almost as if it hadn’t happened at all. She wrote Richard a letter on his birthday because it was the polite thing to do.

When he wrote back with more questions than answers, she attempted to explain what was almost impossible to put into words. Time was different here. She and Charles existed all at once and not at all. They were the same as when they were children, as the second they were born, as the instant the bullet had left the chamber of the gun. The same as they would be when they died someday.

Instead, she told him that Charles had sworn off liquor: _He’s doing better now. We don’t know how to be any other way. I hope you’ll understand._ It didn’t really matter if he did understand. It didn’t matter if Charles did start drinking again. They’d always come back here; to this house, to these rooms.


End file.
